Systems and methods for associating program actors with program genres

ABSTRACT

Methods and systems for calculating, storing, and allowing electronic searches for metadata associated with media titles. The metadata includes scores specific to each actor and each genre of a media title, where the scores indicate the degree to which an actor&#39;s performance in that title corresponds to a particular genre. Electronic searches for particular actors&#39; performance in a specific genre thus return more accurate results that more correctly reflect how well the actors&#39; performances reflect that genre.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.16/916,418, filed Jun. 30, 2020, which is a continuation of U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 16/216,149, filed Dec. 11, 2018, now U.S. Pat. No.10,735,786. The disclosure of which are hereby incorporated by referenceherein in their entireties.

BACKGROUND

This disclosure relates generally to electronic searches, and morespecifically to associating program actors with program genres.

SUMMARY

Conventional electronic searches for media titles often return resultsthat are inaccurate and misleading. Electronic searches for movies of aparticular genre and having a particular actor often return a number ofspurious results. For example, such searches typically returnundesirable results such as movies of that genre but having thatparticular actor only in a cameo role, and movies in which the actordoes not participate in any scenes of that genre.

Such electronic searches typically rely on metadata that lackssufficient granularity to produce accurate results. Relevant metadatafor media titles typically includes cast information, i.e. the actorsand actresses credited as appearing in the title, and genre information.This genre information in turn includes relevant genres and a score foreach genre, where the score quantifies the dominance of that genre inthe overall title. However, the cast metadata and genre metadata areindependent of each other. No metadata relates the cast to the genre.That is, the metadata for each genre does not describe how much anyactor contributes to, or is involved in, that genre—it only shows thecontribution of that overall genre to the title, and does not show anyindividual actor's contribution to that genre. Similarly, the castmetadata does not describe the amount by which cast members individuallycontribute to a genre. Thus, for instance, all that an electronic searchmay determine about a particular movie is which genres it falls under,and who acted in it. Searches cannot determine which actors are involvedin which genres, as no metadata exists to inform such a query.

Accordingly, to overcome the deficiencies that exist when conductingelectronic searches for media titles, systems and methods are describedherein for a computer-based process that generates metadata which tieseach actor to the genres he or she is involved in. More specifically,this metadata includes the genres each actor participates in, and thedegree to which they participate in each genre. Generated metadataincludes, for each actor, the genres they are involved in and a scorefor each genre. These scores indicate the degree or amount that actorparticipates in that genre. Thus, metadata for a particular media titleincludes information describing the amount each actor contributes to orparticipates in each genre. Electronic searches can thus more accuratelydetermine an actor's relation or contribution to a particular genre invarious media titles, resulting in more accurate search results.

In more detail, a computer-based system generates a metadata scorespecific to a particular actor and a particular genre. A media titlewill thus have associated metadata containing a score for every actorand every genre that actor participates in. Each score thus correspondsto one actor and one genre, and is determined according to the degree towhich that actor contributes to that genre. The scores are stored aselectronically searchable metadata, where each score is associated withits actor and genre. Electronic searches can thus search according tothis more granular metadata, to retrieve results that more accuratelyreflect an actor's contribution to a particular genre within a givenmedia title, rather than just reflecting the actor's presence in a mediatitle of a particular genre.

Described herein are various ways of calculating metadata scores. Onemethod involves the percentage of scenes of a genre that an actorappears in. More specifically, the scenes of a media title thatcorrespond to a genre are identified. The total duration of these scenesis determined, as is the total amount of time the actor appears in thesescenes. These two quantities are divided to determine the percentage orproportion of time the actor appears in these scenes, and this quantityis set equal to the score for that actor and that genre.

Another method involves the number of words spoken during scenes of aspecific genre. As with the previous method, the scenes of a media titlethat correspond to a genre are identified. The total number of words theactor utters during these scenes is counted, and this total is convertedto a numerical score, with higher totals corresponding to greaterscores.

A further method involves the amount of time an actor appears in scenesof high audio volume. Such scenes are identified, and the score is setequal to the percentage or proportion of time the actor appears in thesescenes. This score may, for example, correspond to genres typicallyassociated with high audible volume, such as the action or thrillergenres.

Various other factors may also contribute to these scores. Inparticular, the score may be increased or decreased, i.e. incremented ordecremented by a predetermined amount, in response to certainoccurrences. For instance, a score may be adjusted by some amount if itis determined that the actor won an award for his or her performance inthe media title. If this award is a positive award such as a BestActor/Actress award, the score is increased. Conversely, if the award isa negative award such as a Worst Actor/Actress award, the score may bedecreased.

Reviews may also contribute to a score, with negative reviews decreasingthe score and positive reviews increasing it. Electronically searchablereviews may be retrieved and parsed to detect predetermined keywords,and the presence of these keywords may be used to increment or decrementthe score. The predetermined keywords may be divided into positive andnegative keywords, with positive keywords adding to the score andnegative keywords decreasing it. The keywords may be further categorizedby genre. For instance, phrases such as “vicious fighting technique” maybe categorized as positive keywords for an action genre. On the otherhand, terms such as “unconvincing” may be categorized as negative for adrama genre, and phrases such as “bad acting” and “cringeworthyperformance” may be categorized as negative for all genres. Eachdetected keyword may have a value associated with it, and these valuesmay be used to increment or decrement a score. Reviews may be any typeof review, such as reviews authored by well-known critics, establishedsources, social media reviews, or any other electronically retrievablesource.

The above described metadata improves the accuracy of electronicsearches for media titles. Metadata scores may be generated and storedin electronically searchable form, as an added component to theconventional metadata associated with a media title. Electronic searchesthus retrieve the stored metadata scores. Retrieved results can then beordered by score, and thus presented as a list of media titles orderedaccording to the degree to which actors contributed to genres specificmedia titles. In this manner, electronic searches for media titles witha selected genre and actor would thus return results ranked according tothe degree that actor participated in that particular genre, rather thanjust titles having that actor and overall genre.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

The above and other objects and advantages of the disclosure will beapparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, takenin conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like referencecharacters refer to like parts throughout, and in which:

FIG. 1A illustrates exemplary search results ordered according toassociated metadata scores of the present disclosure;

FIG. 1B illustrates exemplary metadata for media titles according to anembodiment of the present disclosure;

FIG. 2 is a generalized embodiment of an illustrative user equipmentdevice constructed for use according to embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram representation of an exemplary electronicsearch and communication system according to embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 4 is a generalized embodiment of electronic computers constructedto implement metadata scoring and electronic search operations ofembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating process steps of metadata generationaccording to embodiments of the disclosure;

FIGS. 6-10 are flowcharts illustrating further details of process stepsfor generating metadata scores; and

FIG. 11 is a flowchart illustrating process steps of electronic searcheson metadata generated according to embodiments of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In one embodiment, the disclosure relates to a system that calculates,stores, and allows electronic searches for metadata associated withmedia titles. This metadata is of a particular format, having scoresrelating the performance of a particular actor to each specific genre ina media title.

Conventional metadata describing media titles only has genre andactor/cast information that describes the degree to which each titlecorrelates to a genre. For example:

-   -   Title: Black Panther    -   Genres: Action{90}< >Thriller{70}< >Comedy{30}< > . . .    -   Cast: Chadwick Boseman < >Letitia Wright < >Martin Freeman < > .        . .

As can be seen, each genre relates only to the title as a whole. Thatis, each genre score describes only the contribution of the title as awhole to that genre. Genre scores provide no information as to whichactor contributes to which genres. In the example above, it cannot bedetermined whether Chadwick Boseman's performance primarily fell underthe action genre, the thriller genre, or the comedy genre. The same istrue of each other actor. Martin Freeman may have played primarily acomedic role, for instance, but this cannot be determined from theabove.

This leads electronic searches to return poor and inaccurate results.Searches for “action movies of Martin Freeman”, for example, would rankresults such as this title highly, as it has Martin Freeman in it andhas a high action score (90), even though Martin Freeman's performancein this title would likely be characterized as largely comedic (i.e.,acting primarily in a comic relief role). Such a search result would bedeemed by many as being misleading or simply inaccurate.

In contrast, embodiments of the disclosure describe generation ofelectronically stored metadata that connects each actor's performance tospecific genres, thus resulting in more accurate searches for mediatitles. FIG. 1A is an example of such stored metadata for one particulartitle. Instead of being structured as above, metadata of this example isstructured as follows:

-   -   Title: Black Panther    -   Cast-Genre: Chadwick Boseman        (Action{90}< >Drama{70}< >Comedy{30}, . . . ) Letitia Wright        (Action{40}< >Thriller{20}< >Comedy{75}, . . . ) Martin Freeman        (Action {25}< >Drama {25}< >Comedy {40, . . . )

Here, the metadata contains a score specific to each actor'scontribution to each genre. For example, Chadwick Boseman merits a scoreof 90 for Action, indicating that his performance was veryaction-oriented, i.e. he contributed significantly to the action in thismovie title. Conversely, he has a score of 30 for Comedy, indicatingthat his performance was not very comedic, i.e. his character did notcontribute significantly to the comedic scenes of the movie.

A score for each actor-genre pair generates more accurate searchresults. FIG. 1B illustrates exemplary search results utilizing metadatastructured according to the disclosure. When “show me action movies ofChadwick Boseman” is entered as a search query, results are returned asshown on the left-hand column of FIG. 1B, while the correspondingmetadata for each result is shown on the right-hand column. The searchresults returned are ordered according to the Action score assigned toChadwick Boseman for each title. Because Black Panther has the highestAction score for Chadwick Boseman, this title is returned as the firstresult. Successive results are arranged in decreasing order of Actionscores specific to Chadwick Boseman. As can be seen, such results trackChadwick Boseman's action performances well, with each later resultbeing a title in which his performance is less and less action-oriented.Accordingly, embodiments of the disclosure provide more granularmetadata that more accurately characterizes the performance of eachactor in a media title, thus resulting in more accurate electronicsearches.

Metadata of the disclosure may be accessed and analyzed by any hardwarecapable of conducting a search for electronically stored content. FIG. 2shows a generalized embodiment of an illustrative electronic computingdevice 200 capable of performing such searches and displayingcorresponding results. For instance, device 200 may be a desktop,laptop, or tablet computer, Internet-enabled television, or may be acellular phone with similar capabilities.

Computing device 200 may receive content and data via input/output(hereinafter “I/O”) path 202. I/O path 202 may provide content (e.g.,broadcast programming, on-demand programming, Internet content, contentavailable over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN),and/or other content) and data to control circuitry 204, which includesprocessing circuitry 206 and storage 208. Control circuitry 204 may beused to send and receive commands, requests, and other suitable datausing I/O path 202. I/O path 202 may connect control circuitry 204 (andspecifically processing circuitry 206) to one or more communicationspaths (described below). I/O functions may be provided by one or more ofthese communications paths, but are shown as a single path in FIG. 2 toavoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Control circuitry 204 may be based on any suitable processing circuitrysuch as processing circuitry 206. As referred to herein, processingcircuitry should be understood to mean circuitry based on one or moremicroprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors,programmable logic devices, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), etc., and may includea multi-core processor (e.g., dual-core, quad-core, hexa-core, or anysuitable number of cores) or supercomputer. In some embodiments,processing circuitry may be distributed across multiple separateprocessors or processing units, for example, multiple of the same typeof processing units (e.g., two Intel Core i7 processors) or multipledifferent processors (e.g., an Intel Core i5 processor and an Intel Corei7 processor). In some embodiments, control circuitry 204 executesinstructions for a media guidance application stored in memory (i.e.,storage 208). Specifically, control circuitry 204 may be instructed bythe media guidance application to perform the functions discussed aboveand below. For example, the media guidance application may provideinstructions to control circuitry 204 to generate the media guidancedisplays. In some implementations, any action performed by controlcircuitry 204 may be based on instructions received from the mediaguidance application.

In client-server based embodiments, control circuitry 204 may includecommunications circuitry suitable for communicating with a guidanceapplication server or other networks or servers. The instructions forcarrying out the above-mentioned functionality may be stored on theguidance application server. Communications circuitry may include acable modem, an integrated services digital network (ISDN) modem, adigital subscriber line (DSL) modem, a telephone modem, Ethernet card,or a wireless modem for communications with other equipment, or anyother suitable communications circuitry. Such communications may involvethe Internet or any other suitable communications networks or paths. Inaddition, communications circuitry may include circuitry that enablespeer-to-peer communication of user equipment devices, or communicationof user equipment devices in locations remote from each other (describedin more detail below).

Memory may be an electronic storage device provided as storage 208 thatis part of control circuitry 204. As referred to herein, the phrase“electronic storage device” or “storage device” should be understood tomean any device for storing electronic data, computer software, orfirmware, such as random-access memory, read-only memory, hard drives,optical drives, digital video disc (DVD) recorders, compact disc (CD)recorders, BLU-RAY disc (BD) recorders, BLU-RAY 3D disc recorders,digital video recorders (DVR, sometimes called a personal videorecorder, or PVR), solid state devices, quantum storage devices, gamingconsoles, gaming media, or any other suitable fixed or removable storagedevices, and/or any combination of the same. Storage 208 may be used tostore various types of content described herein. Nonvolatile memory mayalso be used (e.g., to launch a boot-up routine and other instructions).Cloud-based storage, described in relation to FIG. 3 , may be used tosupplement storage 208 or instead of storage 208.

Control circuitry 204 may include video generating circuitry and tuningcircuitry, such as one or more analog tuners, one or more MPEG-2decoders or other digital decoding circuitry, high-definition tuners, orany other suitable tuning or video circuits or combinations of suchcircuits. Encoding circuitry (e.g., for converting over-the-air, analog,or digital signals to MPEG signals for storage) may also be provided.Control circuitry 204 may also include scaler circuitry for upconvertingand downconverting content into the preferred output format of the userequipment 200. Circuitry 204 may also include digital-to-analogconverter circuitry and analog-to-digital converter circuitry forconverting between digital and analog signals. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may be used by the user equipment device to receive and todisplay, to play, or to record content. The circuitry described herein,including for example, the tuning, video generating, encoding, decoding,encrypting, decrypting, scaler, and analog/digital circuitry, may beimplemented using software running on one or more general purpose orspecialized processors. If storage 208 is provided as a separate devicefrom user equipment 200, the tuning and encoding circuitry (includingmultiple tuners) may be associated with storage 208.

A user may send instructions to control circuitry 204 using user inputinterface 210. User input interface 210 may be any suitable userinterface, such as a remote control, mouse, trackball, keypad, keyboard,touch screen, touchpad, stylus input, joystick, voice recognitioninterface, or other user input interfaces. Display 212 may be providedas a stand-alone device or integrated with other elements of userequipment device 200. For example, display 212 may be a touchscreen ortouch-sensitive display. In such circumstances, user input interface 210may be integrated with or combined with display 212. Display 212 may beone or more of a monitor, a television, a liquid crystal display (LCD)for a mobile device, active matrix display, cathode ray tube display,light-emitting diode display, organic light-emitting diode display,quantum dot display, or any other suitable equipment for displayingvisual images. In some embodiments, display 212 may be HDTV-capable. Insome embodiments, display 212 may be a 3D display, and the interactivemedia guidance application and any suitable content may be displayed in3D.

A video card or graphics card may generate the output to the display212. The video card may offer various functions such as acceleratedrendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TVoutput, or the ability to connect multiple monitors. The video card maybe any processing circuitry described above in relation to controlcircuitry 204. The video card may be integrated with the controlcircuitry 204. Speakers 214 may be provided as integrated with otherelements of user equipment device 200 or may be stand-alone units. Theaudio component of videos and other content displayed on display 212 maybe played through speakers 214. In some embodiments, the audio may bedistributed to a receiver (not shown), which processes and outputs theaudio via speakers 214.

Device 200 of FIG. 2 can be implemented in system 300 of FIG. 3 as usertelevision equipment 302, user computer equipment 304, wireless usercommunications device 306, or any other type of user equipment suitablefor conducting an electronic search and displaying results thereof. Userequipment devices may be part of a network of devices. Various networkconfigurations of devices may be implemented and are discussed in moredetail below.

In system 300, there is typically more than one of each type of userequipment device but only one of each is shown in FIG. 3 to avoidovercomplicating the drawing. In addition, each user may utilize morethan one type of user equipment device and also more than one of eachtype of user equipment device.

The user equipment devices may be coupled to communications network 314.Namely, user television equipment 302, user computer equipment 304, andwireless user communications device 306 are coupled to communicationsnetwork 314 via communications paths 308, 310, and 312, respectively.Communications network 314 may be one or more networks including theInternet, a mobile phone network, mobile voice or data network (e.g., a4G or LTE network), cable network, public switched telephone network, orother types of communications network or combinations of communicationsnetworks. Paths 308, 310, and 312 may separately or together include oneor more communications paths, such as, a satellite path, a fiber-opticpath, a cable path, a path that supports Internet communications (e.g.,IPTV), free-space connections (e.g., for broadcast or other wirelesssignals), or any other suitable wired or wireless communications path orcombination of such paths. Path 312 is drawn with dotted lines toindicate that in the exemplary embodiment shown in FIG. 3 it is awireless path and paths 308 and 310 are drawn as solid lines to indicatethey are wired paths (although these paths may be wireless paths, ifdesired). Communications with the user equipment devices may be providedby one or more of these communications paths, but are shown as a singlepath in FIG. 3 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Although communications paths are not drawn between user equipmentdevices, these devices may communicate directly with each other viacommunication paths, such as those described above in connection withpaths 308, 310, and 312, as well as other short-range point-to-pointcommunication paths, such as USB cables, IEEE 1394 cables, wirelesspaths (e.g., Bluetooth, infrared, IEEE 802-11x, etc.), or othershort-range communication via wired or wireless paths. BLUETOOTH is acertification mark owned by Bluetooth SIG, INC. The user equipmentdevices may also communicate with each other directly through anindirect path via communications network 314.

System 300 also includes content source 316, and search engine 318. Thecontent source 316 represents any computer-accessible source of content,such as a storage for the movies and metadata of FIG. 1 . Therecommendation building computer 318 and recommendation engine computer324 are in communication with each other, and with any of the devices302, 304 and 306, through communications network 314.

FIG. 4 illustrates further details of search engine 318. Search engine318 is an electronic computer that has input/output (I/O) modules 410,420 for transferring data to and from the search engine 318. The searchengine 318 also has a processor 430 and memory 440. The I/O modules 410,420, processor 430, and memory 440 are each connected to, andcommunicate with each other through, a bus 450. As with device 200, theprocessor 430 and memory 440 may collectively be considered as controlcircuitry. In some embodiments, computer 318 may be in electroniccommunication with content source 316 and device 200 through I/O modules410 and 420, respectively.

The processor 430 executes programs stored in memory 440, including asearch engine program 460. The search engine program 460 has a number ofmodules, including an interface module 465, a search module 470, anordering module 475, and a storage module 480. The interface module 465provides an interface for exchange of data with devices 200, while thesearch module 470 conducts searches of electronically stored informationand returns relevant results. The ordering module 475 orders the resultsfor transmission to devices 200 and presentation to the user. Inembodiments of the disclosure, ordering module 475 orders search resultsaccording to the metadata scores described herein. The storage module480 stores retrieved results for ordering by the ordering module 475,and retrieval and transmission to devices 200.

As shown in FIG. 4 , the search engine 318 is a stand-alone computer incommunication with the devices 302, 304, 306 over communication network314. However, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that themethods and processes of the disclosure can be carried out on anycomputational devices suitable for executing the search engine 318programs. For example, the computer 318 may be a server located remotefrom devices 200. Alternatively, the search engine 318 programs may beresident on a device 200. Embodiments of the disclosure contemplate anynumber or configuration of digital computers for storing and executingthe search engine 318 programs and their associated data, located on orremote from any device 200.

FIG. 4 illustrates a configuration in which modules and functionality ofembodiments of the disclosure reside on computer 318 remote from thedevice 200. That is, content searching is performed by an applicationlocated remote from device 200, such as an application running on cloudservers. In this configuration, computer 318 may be a cloud server orcomponents of one or more cloud servers, or may be one or more othercomputers located remote from device 200. However, embodiments of thedisclosure also encompass configurations in which modules andfunctionality of computer 318 reside in any location. For instance, anyone or more of modules 465-480 may be resident on device 200 or contentsource 316, or may be distributed across multiple peer or othercomputing devices.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating process steps for generating metadataaccording to the present disclosure. Here, a separate score is generatedfor each actor and each genre of a particular media asset, or content(Step 500). Each score is associated with a single actor and a singlegenre, and corresponds to the degree to which that particular actorcontributed to that particular genre. In one embodiment, such scores canbe generated by content source 316 for its resident content. However,other embodiments of the disclosure contemplate generation and storageof scores at any location.

Once scores are generated specific to each actor and each genre, thescores are stored in electronically searchable form, so that each scoreis associated with its particular actor and genre (Step 510). Forexample, when content source 316 is a server of a content provider, thecontent source 316 stores electronically accessible metadatadescriptions that contain searchable descriptors of matching multimediafiles. These multimedia files may also be stored on content source 316.The storage of searchable metadata by content providers is known, andembodiments of the disclosure contemplate storage in any electronicallysearchable format. For example, metadata scores of the disclosure may bestored in conventional actor metadata fields along with actor names, orconventional actor metadata fields may be replaced by actor/genre scorefields each listing the actor, a genre, and associated score ascalculated in Step 500. In this manner, electronic searches conducted bydevices such as search engine 460 of server 318 access these actorfields, or actor/genre score fields, and parse/retrieve relevant scoredata for ranking and display to the user.

The scores of Step 500 may be calculated in any manner so long as theyreflect the amount each actor contributes to or participates in aspecific genre within a particular media asset. In some embodiments, thescores may be determined according to a combination of quantitativefactors and qualitative factors. Here, quantitative factors representobjective measures of the amount of coverage of a genre by an actor in aprogram or media asset. Qualitative factors, conversely, representsubjective measures of justification done to the genre by the actor inthe particular program. Each factor may be assigned a score or integernumber, and these scores may be summed to determine the total or overallscore of Step 500. Each of these factors may be determined in anymanner. Exemplary methods and processes for determining these factorsfollow, although the disclosure contemplates any other method fordetermining quantitative and qualitative factors for scores describingthe contribution of an actor to a genre in any media.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating process steps for determining onesuch quantitative factor. In particular, the process of FIG. 6determines the percent coverage of an actor in scenes of a particulargenre. That is, for scenes predominantly of a particular genre, thisfactor determines the amount of time that the actor is in such scenes.First, the portions of content corresponding to a particular genre aredetermined, where these portions have a collective duration equal tosome first amount of time (Step 600). For example, the scenes of a moviethat are characterized as predominantly Action scenes are identified,where these scenes collectively have a total duration measured in someamount of time, e.g., seconds.

Next, a second amount of time that the actor appears in these identifiedscenes is determined (Step 610). Appearance in identified scenes can bedetermined manually such as by operators who view scenes and record theamount of time actors appear in each, or automatically such as by knownfacial recognition software. This software may be implemented on contentsource 316, to determine the amount of time each actor appears in eachscene. Scores are then determined according to the proportion of thefirst amount of time that is the second amount of time (Step 620). Thatis, the score is the percentage of time the actor appears in theidentified scenes, and may be determined as the second amount of timedivided by the first amount of time, converted to a percentage ifdesired.

FIG. 7 illustrates process steps for determining another quantitativefactor. In particular, this factor expresses the number of words spokenby an actor in scenes of a particular genre. Higher scores for thisfactor reflect more dialog, and thus greater participation, in scenes ofthat genre. Here, the portions of content corresponding to a particulargenre are determined (Step 700), similar to Step 600 above. The numberof words an actor utters in those portions of content are thendetermined (Step 710), such as by manual count or by known voicerecognition software, perhaps located on content source 316. The scorefor this factor is then determined according to this determined numberof words (Step 720). This score may be determined in any manner, such asby a table of values relating spoken word count to factor scores (e.g.,0-100 words=10, 101-500 words=20, 501-1000 words=30, etc.), an equationor function relating word count to score, or the like. Any method ofdetermining a numerical score of any desired range, from a count ofwords, is contemplated.

FIG. 8 illustrates process steps for determining a further quantitativefactor. The quantitative factor of FIG. 8 relates to the amount of timean actor appears in scenes of high auditory volume, and may thus beuseful in characterizing scenes corresponding to genres such as Actionor Thriller. First, portions of content having volume greater than apredetermined volume are determined (Step 800). These scenescollectively have a duration measured as a first amount of time. Step800 may employ any measure of volume, such as average volume across theentire scene, peak volume in a scene, the amount of time volume exceedssome predetermined amount, or the like. Any measure predictive of a“loud” genre may be used.

Next, a second amount of time is determined, where this second amount oftime is the amount of time the actor in question appears in thedetermined portions of content (Step 810). As in Step 610 above, thissecond amount of time may be determined in any manner, such as manuallyor by facial recognition software. The score for this factor is thendetermined as the proportion of the first amount of time that is thesecond amount of time (Step 820). That is, the score is the percentageof time the actor appears in the identified scenes, and may bedetermined as the second amount of time divided by the first amount oftime, converted to a percentage if desired.

Qualitative factors may be employed in score calculation, as well.Unlike the above quantitative factors, qualitative factors aresubjective measures of the degree to which an actor's performance isdeemed to fall under a particular genre. Any such measures arecontemplated. FIG. 9 is a flowchart illustrating process steps fordetermining one qualitative factor. Here, the score for this qualitativefactor is increased or decreased according to awards earned by the actorfor that particular content. In particular, the content source 316, oranother computing device carrying out the above scoring processes,determines awards won by an actor for content (Step 900). The existenceof awards may be determined in any manner, such as by electronicsearches for known awards, searches of web pages known to list awards(e.g., the Wikipedia® pages of particular movies or actors), searchesfor news articles containing the actor's name, the title of the contentand an award name, or the like.

The awards may be positive or negative awards. For example, manywell-known awards are positive and indicate good performances, orperformances that match their intended genre well. Examples of suchawards include the Critic's Choice award, Emmy or Oscar awards for BestActor/Actress, and the like. Conversely, other awards are negativeawards that indicate bad performances or performances ill-suited to thatparticular genre. Examples of such awards include Golden Raspberryawards for Worst Actor/Actress and Worst Film, and the like.

Accordingly, this factor is incremented or decremented according to thenumber and type of awards detected (Step 910), with positive awardsresulting in score increments and negative awards resulting in scoredecrements. Scoring may be performed in any manner. For example, listsof positive and negative awards may be kept, and the score for thisfactor may be incremented/decremented by a predetermined amount for eachpositive/negative award earned which appears on the list, to somemaximum/minimum value. Increment/decrement values may be constant or mayvary by award, with certain awards such as Best Actor or Best Film beingconsidered more significant, or indicative of a better performance, andthus worth more.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart illustrating process steps for determininganother qualitative factor. In this factor, scores are increased ordecreased according to electronically accessible reviews by knowncritics, with positive reviews resulting in score increases and negativereviews resulting in score decreases. Lists of genre-specific positiveand negative keywords are maintained at, for example, a storage incontent source 316. Reviews are electronically searched and retrievedaccording to, for instance, critic name or organization, whereupon thesereviews are parsed to determine the presence of any keywords in thestored lists (Step 1000). The score for this factor is then incrementedor decremented in response to any detected keywords (Step 1010).

The reviews used for scoring in the process of FIG. 10 may be anyelectronically searchable reviews. Many such reviewers are well known,and their reviews appear on known Internet pages, e.g., well known moviecritics who work for established news publications. Others are locatedon known social media pages which can be readily searched and retrieved.

The maintained keyword lists are lists of genres and their keywords,i.e. genre-specific keywords. When a particular actor and genre arescored, reviews containing that particular content title and actor aresearched, retrieved, and parsed. For each successive genre, keywords forthat genre are compared against any parsed keywords, with matchesresulting in score increments/decrements. For example, when scoring theAction genre of Chadwick Boseman in Black Panther, exemplary positiveAction keywords may be words or phrases such as “vicious hand to hand .. . ”, “riveting”, or the like. Each matched word or phrase in a reviewincrements the score by a predetermined amount. Conversely, exemplarynegative Action keywords may be words or phrases such as “bad acting”,“unconvincing”, “stilted action”, etc., and each matching phrase inreviews would decrement the score by a predetermined amount.

Scores for each factor are then combined, to produce a single overallscore for each actor-genre pair. Both the individual scores for eachfactor, and the overall score, may be determined and/or combined in anymanner. For example, each factor score may be scaled so that thecombined total sums to a maximum of 100. Alternatively, certain factorsmay be deemed more important, and thus given a higher weight, so thatthe maximum sum total remains 100 but certain factors contribute to thesum to a greater degree.

In operation, the scores for each factor are summed or otherwiseaccumulated to determine an overall score for each actor-genre pair in amedia title. These scores are stored as electronically searchablemetadata in, e.g., content source 316, as a data structure that can berepresented as shown in FIG. 1B. Electronic searches for particularactors and genres can thus retrieve results that more accurately reflectthe amount that particular actor's performance in various media titlesfalls under that particular genre. FIG. 11 is a flowchart illustratingthese process steps in further detail.

As shown in FIG. 11 , metadata scores are generated for each actor andeach genre of a particular media asset, where each score corresponds tothe degree to which a particular actor contributed to a particular genrein that media asset (Step 1100). Metadata scores are generated as above.The generated scores are then stored in electronically searchable form(Step 1110), such as on content source 316 available to exchange dataover communications network 314.

During an electronic search for, e.g., media assets having a particularactor performing according to a particular genre, the stored scores areretrieved (Step 1120), and corresponding search results are orderedaccording to the retrieved scores. Results are thus presented as aranked list of media assets ordered according to the degree to whichthat particular actor contributed to that particular genre (Step 1130).

Metadata generation may be carried out in any known manner. Metadatageneration instructions, search engine instructions, and/or anyinstructions for performing any of the embodiments discussed herein maybe encoded on computer readable media. Computer readable media includesany media capable of storing data. The computer readable media may betransitory, including, but not limited to, propagating electrical orelectromagnetic signals, or may be non-transitory including, but notlimited to, volatile and non-volatile computer memory (e.g., storages208, 480) or storage devices such as a hard disk, floppy disk, USBdrive, DVD, CD, media cards, register memory, processor caches, RandomAccess Memory (“RAM”), etc. Additionally, electronic searches carriedout in accordance with embodiments of the disclosure may be performed byany computing device or devices, including device 200, content source316, computer 318, or the like. Also, electronic searches carried out inaccordance with embodiments of the disclosure may be carried out by thesame devices that generate metadata of the disclosure, or by differentdevices.

The foregoing description, for purposes of explanation, used specificnomenclature to provide a thorough understanding of the disclosure.However, it will be apparent to one skilled in the art that the specificdetails are not required to practice the methods and systems of thedisclosure. Thus, the foregoing descriptions of specific embodiments ofthe present invention are presented for purposes of illustration anddescription. They are not intended to be exhaustive or to limit theinvention to the precise forms disclosed. Many modifications andvariations are possible in view of the above teachings. For example,metadata scores may be determined according to any number andcombination of quantitative and qualitative factors, summed or totaledin any manner. The embodiments were chosen and described in order tobest explain the principles of the invention and its practicalapplications, to thereby enable others skilled in the art to bestutilize the methods and systems of the disclosure and variousembodiments with various modifications as are suited to the particularuse contemplated. Additionally, different features of the variousembodiments, disclosed or otherwise, can be mixed and matched orotherwise combined so as to create further embodiments contemplated bythe disclosure.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: receiving a search querythat identifies an actor and a genre; accessing, in a database, aplurality of media content items, wherein metadata of each media contentitem of the plurality of media content items comprises the name of theactor; for each respective media content item of the plurality of mediacontent items: accessing a respective genre contribution score thatmeasures the actor's degree of contribution to the genre within eachmedia content item; generating for display identifiers of the pluralityof media content items ranked according to their respective genrecontribution score.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the genrecontribution score that measures the actor's degree of contribution tothe genre within each media content item corresponds to the contributionof the actor to at least one scene of a plurality of scenes of the mediacontent item, and wherein the at least one scene corresponds to aparticular genre.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein determining thegenre contribution score further comprises: determining the at least onescene of the media content item corresponding to the particular genrehas a duration that is a first amount of time; determining a secondamount of time that the actor appears in the determined scene;determining the genre contribution score at least in part according to aproportion of the first amount of time to the second amount of time. 4.The method of claim 2, wherein determining the contribution scorefurther comprises: determining a number of words that the actor uttersin the at least one scene; and determining the contribution score atleast in part according to the number of words.
 5. The method of claim2, wherein determining the contribution score further comprises:determining that the at least one scene of the media content item isassociated with a volume greater than a predetermined volume.
 6. Themethod of claim 2, wherein the particular genre is one of action,comedy, drama and thriller.
 7. The method of claim 2, whereindetermining the contribution score further comprises: determining anaward won by the actor for the media content item; and in response tothe determined award, incrementing the contribution score.
 8. The methodof claim 2, wherein determining the contribution score furthercomprises: parsing an electronically searchable review of the mediacontent item to detect the presence of one or more predeterminedkeywords; and in response to the detected presence of the one or morepredetermined keywords, incrementing the contribution score.
 9. Themethod of claim 8, wherein the review is a social media review.
 10. Themethod of claim 2, wherein determining the contribution score furthercomprises: parsing an electronically searchable review of the mediacontent item to detect the presence of one or more predeterminedkeywords; and in response to the detected presence of the one or morepredetermined keywords, decrementing the contribution score.
 11. Asystem comprising: input/output circuitry configured to: receive asearch query that identifies an actor and a genre; control circuitryconfigured to: access, in a database, a plurality of media contentitems, wherein metadata of each media content item of the plurality ofmedia content items comprises the name of the actor; for each respectivemedia content item of the plurality of media content items: access arespective genre contribution score that measures the actor's degree ofcontribution to the genre within each media content item; and whereinthe input/output circuitry is further configured to: generate fordisplay identifiers of the plurality of media content items rankedaccording to their respective genre contribution score.
 12. The systemof claim 11, wherein the genre contribution score that measures theactor's degree of contribution to the genre within each media contentitem corresponds to the contribution of the actor to at least one sceneof a plurality of scenes of the media content item, and wherein the atleast one scene corresponds to a particular genre.
 13. The system ofclaim 12, wherein the control circuitry is further configured todetermine the genre contribution score by: determining the at least onescene of the media content item corresponding to the particular genrehas a duration that is a first amount of time; determining a secondamount of time that the actor appears in the determined scene;determining the genre contribution score at least in part according to aproportion of the first amount of time to the second amount of time. 14.The system of claim 12, wherein the control circuitry is furtherconfigured to determine the genre contribution score by: determining anumber of words that the actor utters in the at least one scene; anddetermining the contribution score at least in part according to thenumber of words.
 15. The system of claim 12, wherein the controlcircuitry is further configured to determine the genre contributionscore by: determining that the at least one scene of the media contentitem is associated with a volume greater than a predetermined volume.16. The system of claim 12, wherein the particular genre is one ofaction, comedy, drama and thriller.
 17. The system of claim 12, whereinthe control circuitry is further configured to determine the genrecontribution score by: determining an award won by the actor for themedia content item; and in response to the determined award,incrementing the contribution score.
 18. The system of claim 12, whereinthe control circuitry is further configured to determine the genrecontribution score by: parsing an electronically searchable review ofthe media content item to detect the presence of one or morepredetermined keywords; and in response to the detected presence of theone or more predetermined keywords, incrementing the contribution score.19. The system of claim 18, wherein the review is a social media review.20. The system of claim 12, wherein the control circuitry is furtherconfigured to determine the genre contribution score by: parsing anelectronically searchable review of the media content item to detect thepresence of one or more predetermined keywords; and in response to thedetected presence of the one or more predetermined keywords,decrementing the contribution score.